Advertising in the UK is heavily regulated and it's important you know the rules. If you work for one of our member-agencies, we can help you understand the legal and regulatory requirements around advertising and help answer your advertising questions. We can also advise you on what the law demands of employers.
We're here to help you
We have a small team of in-house lawyers who, every day, answer IPA member enquiries. We also write or comment on topical issues and let our members know what's happening in the advertising legal landscape. At any time, we could be advising on something as simple as the use of photographs in an ad or as complex as the GDPR. Alongside this, we're closely involved in supporting the industry's self-regulatory system to protect the public from misleading ads.
Email us with your enquiry
Every week, we deal with a high volume of enquiries, so we run a first-come, first-served system.
For advertising law - please email legal@ipa.co.uk
For employment law - please email employment@ipa.co.uk
We aim to answer basic enquiries within 24 hours. More complex enquiries, including contract work will take longer, but we'll let you have a time estimate and keep you posted.
Download the material you need
You can access a wealth of material in our Knowledge Centre including:
Advertising Law
Employment Law
Privacy & Data Protection
HFSS
Brexit
Public Affairs
Our advertising law advice
- ad clearance, including advice on the CAP/BCAP Codes
- contract issues, including client/agency, production and NDAs
- data protection
- production
- preliminary advice on disputes
Our employment law advice
- disciplinary, grievance and absence management issues
- maternity, paternity, parental, shared parental and other family-friendly rights
- flexible working
- equalities law
- TUPE
- contractual issues and staff policies
- redundancy, restructures and other dismissals
We also offer a qualification through Lewis Silkin in the legal and regulatory ad basics called LegRegs.
Important information
- We only provide legal advice under the laws of England and Wales.
- Our advice is provided for the benefit of our member agencies only, and not for the benefit of clients. The IPA accepts no liability for advice relied on by any client.
- Our employment law advice is provided for the benefit of the member agency as an employer: we cannot provide advice to individual agency staff for their own benefit.
- The IPA legal team also fulfils a public affairs role by representing members' interests to regulators and Government and works alongside the Advertising Association.
Each of the IPA’s Legal team is a UK-qualified solicitor, authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA). Although we provide our services to corporate members of the IPA, the IPA is not itself authorised or regulated by the SRA. Therefore, we are not required to, and do not, have compulsory minimum levels of indemnity insurance via the SRA to protect clients in case something goes wrong. Our services are, however, covered under the IPA’s professional indemnity insurance policy.
Should you have a complaint about a member of the IPA’s Legal team, please email the IPA’s Legal & Public Affairs Director, Richard Lindsay, via richard@ipa.co.uk, or the IPA’s Director of Member Services, Tom Mott, via tom@ipa.co.uk.
Contact
Juliet Bawtree
Associate Director, Legal & Public Affairs (Employment)
Telephone
0207 201 8202
Helen Bowyer
Associate Director, Advertising Law
Telephone
020 7201 8206
Last updated 10 November 2021
Good news – your email swung it for us and the client has now agreed on that crucial point. In typical fashion, they have now raised some further queries, but nothing we can’t get over. We are all but appointed now.